Edison and the Iranians

WHEN I WAS seven, or thereabouts, I changed a lightbulb. It fell from a fixture in the kitchen and landed on the floor, somehow still unbroken, and I followed my mother’s instructions to turn off the light switch and screw in the new bulb then turn it back on. The entire time, if you can imagine, I had no idea that I was actually learning to dance like an Iranian.

Now, on the other hand, I know it all too well. I know it because I’ve been told by several people, fewer than half of whom I’ve actually known, that that’s how you do it. Persians dance by changing lightbulbs, and that, it seems, is that.

I know this because Emily, my girlfriend, is half Persian, and last weekend we attended a half-Persian wedding in California. We flew into LAX, and after a cumbersome and unnecessary trek to our rental car, drove up the Pacific Coast to Santa Barbara. At Oxnard, we hooked up with Route 101, the Pacific Coast Highway. I turned on The Beach Boys (an early album: funny enough, The Beach Boys recorded a song in 2012 called “Pacific Coast Highway,” which utterly fails to capture the spirit of the Pacific Coast Highway), and we stared out the windows of our Mitsubishi compact as we drove (Emily had tried to rent a convertible just for the experience; Enterprise rent-a-car hadn’t obliged), and I started thinking that maybe California was okay after all. The supreme mediocrity of In-N-Out Burger — I was nauseous for most of the drive, and for most of the following three days, and frankly it hasn’t quite worn off yet — had me doubting it, but the PCH put the state back on track.

Fast forward one night, then, and I’m standing in the living room of a four-bedroom Airbnb that we’re sharing with 12 of Emily’s Persian relatives, and they’re trying to teach me to dance like I’m from Iran.

One of Emily’s uncles — I think I mean that literally, but then again, it seems that most of the people she knows are aunts and uncles — led the charge. “All you have to do,” he said, heavily accented and grinning, “is change the bulb.” He twisted his hands, as if he was unscrewing two lightbulbs. “Just change the bulb!”

As far as I can tell, or at least as far as I was taught, there are three main moves in Persian dance. The first is the ordinary lightbulb-change: you hold your hands out in front of you, one slightly below eye level and one above, and do the lightbulb-changing motion, periodically switching which hand is higher. The second is a little bit like the dab: one arm goes out to the side, and the other comes across the chest toward the extended one, and you switch every so often, and all the while, you change the lightbulb. The third, I’ll admit, is still pretty much a mystery to me: at some mysterious signal in the music, which everyone but me could hear, you start shaking violently back and forth while pointing your palms outward and moving them up and down in time with your violent shaking.

“Just remember, James,” Emily’s uncle and the rest of the family kept saying. “Change the lightbulb. Just change the lightbulb.”

AT THE WEDDING, after a short, sweet ceremony and a steak dinner, it was time to see whether I’d actually learned anything.

There was no live band, just a DJ alternating between contemporary pop and Persian music. At one point, Emily and I were sitting on a couch in a room off the dance floor, going over wedding pros and cons, and I said that I wanted a live band.

“But then they can’t play Persian music!” she said.

“They can take a break,” I responded.

“Then my uncle can come up on stage and DJ,” she said. She put on an accent. “Ok everyone, change the bulb!”

Soon after that, after the first dance and the cutting of the cake and the bouquet toss (it was a Jewish-Persian wedding, which must have been complicated in all sorts of ways), Emily led me on to the dance floor. A Persian song was playing. Emily launched into the conventional bulb-change…then the dab bulb-change…then the violent shakes…and all the while, I followed.

I don’t think I did badly, truth be told. In traditional pop-dance settings, I’m laughably terrible, but Emily says that that’s actually because my dancing style, somehow, is naturally Persian. I did a passable bulb-change, and I wasn’t bad at the violent shake; I think the dab bulb-change is my specialty. The Persians in the room could tell what I was doing, which must mean it was at least passable. They all said the same thing.

“This is my boyfriend James!” Emily would shout over the music. “I’m teaching him to dance like a Persian!”

“Yes, James!” they would shout back. “Change the light bulb!”

“I’m changing it!” I would shout, smiling, working hard not to sound rude. It’s not like changing the light bulb was so obvious I didn’t even need to be told. Then they would walk to another part of the dance floor, and somehow convey what they’d heard to everyone else, so that the next time it happened:

“This is my boyfriend James!” Emily said. “I’m teaching him — ”

“Ah, James!” the new relative — someone I had never seen or spoken to in my life — would say. “Yes, change the light bulb!”

It got even quicker as the night went on.

“This — ” Emily would say.

“Yes!” a new relative would exclaim. “James! Welcome! Change the lightbulb!”

By 11:00 or so, as the reception was winding down, I was splayed on a couch in a jet-lagged stupor. The dance floor wasn’t empty yet; I was just too tired to carry on. But every so often, my arms would feel the rhythm, shaking back and forth, twisting slowly but surely, changing the light bulb again.

IT WAS HARD to leave the next morning. We had a noon flight from LAX to Detroit, and between the drive from Santa Barbara and the rental car labyrinth and a notification from Delta that the TSA expected increased traffic through security that day, we were out the door before 7:00 in the morning.

I didn’t want to leave. Leaving meant more months apart, more video-chats marked by simultaneous closeness and frustrating separation, more general malaise. I was working as a camp counselor, and leaving meant going back to my cabin and the kids I was in charge of.

They never listen, those kids. Talking late into the night, leaving the cabin a mess every morning, throwing basketballs around haphazardly…I swear, one of these nights, they’re going to get too crazy and break a light in our cabin. These days, of course, that’s a problem I can handle.